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JIMMY YELLOW HAWK by Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve

JIMMY YELLOW HAWK

By

Pub Date: March 15th, 1972
Publisher: Holiday House

Little Jim Yellow Hawk, a Sioux on a South Dakota reservation, is unhappy about the teasing he must endure because of his ""little kid"" nickname. When his grandfather tells of a boy of old who won an Indian name along with respect by trapping rabbits for his starving village, Little Jim sets some traps which do at last yield a rare and valuable mink. Since the old times are gone, the boy does not thereby earn an Indian name but he does become Jimmy. Basking in congratulations on the pelt, ""Jimmy was very proud and happy. What pleased him most of all was that no one. . . called him Little Jim any more."" There's a little information about Reservation life worked in earlier through a rodeo and a Pow Wow, and some background about Little Jim and his family is obviously planted in early conversations. In short, this implausibly wish-fulfilling story (how many targets of schoolyard scorn become heroes overnight?) is just a bit of awkwardly fictionalized ethnic instruction, and the portrayal of Little Jim's rancher father -- as better off because harder working and more accepting of white ways than the other Indians -- won't boost Red power.